It is the first of the Super Mario series of games. In Super Mario Bros., the player controls Mario and in a two-player game, a second player controls Mario's brother Luigi as he travels through the Mushroom Kingdom in order to rescue Princess Toadstool from the antagonist Bowser.

In 2005, IGN's poll named the "pioneering" and "highly influential" title as the "greatest game of all time", considering it to have aided in resurrecting the crashed American video game market of the 1980s.[6] The game's mid-1980s release served to further popularize the side-scrolling subgenre of the already popular platform video game genre of the early 1980s. In addition to its definitive features, the game has also sold enormously well, and was the best-selling game of all time for a single platform for approximately three decades at over 40 million units, until Nintendo's Wii Sports took that title. The commercial success of Super Mario Bros. has caused it to be ported to almost every one of Nintendo's major gaming consoles. Nintendo released special red variants of the Wii and Nintendo DSi XL consoles in re-packaged, Mario-themed limited edition bundles in late 2010 as part of the 25th anniversary of the game's original release.

Gameplay

The player controls Mario throughout the Mushroom Kingdom. Mario's abilities can be changed by picking up certain items; for example, Mario is able to shoot fireballs if he picks up a Fire Flower.

The player takes on the role of the main protagonist of the series, Mario. Mario's younger brother, Luigi, is only playable by the second player in the game's multiplayer mode and assumes the same plot role and functionality as Mario. The objective is to race through the Mushroom Kingdom, survive the main antagonist Bowser's forces, and save Princess Toadstool.[7]:7 The player moves from the left side of the screen to the right side in order to reach the flag pole at the end of each level.

The game world has coins scattered around it for Mario to collect, and special bricks marked with a question mark (?), which when hit from below by Mario, may reveal more coins or a special item. Other "secret", often invisible, bricks may contain more coins or rare items. If the player gains a red and yellow Super Mushroom, Mario grows to double his size and can take one extra hit from most enemies and obstacles, in addition to being able to break bricks above him.[7]:12 Players are given a certain number of lives, and may gain additional lives by picking up green and orange 1-Up mushrooms, collecting 100 coins, defeating several enemies in a row with a Koopa shell, or bouncing on enemies successively without touching the ground. One life is lost when Mario takes damage while small, falls in a pit, or runs out of time. The game ends when all lives are lost.

Mario's primary attack is jumping on top of enemies, though many enemies have differing responses to this. For example, a Goomba will flatten and be defeated,[7]:12 while a Koopa Troopa will temporarily retract into its shell, allowing Mario to use it as a projectile.[7]:11 These shells may be deflected off a wall to destroy other enemies, though they can also bounce back against Mario, which will hurt or kill him.[7]:19 Another attack, for enemies standing overhead, is to jump up and hit beneath the brick that the enemy is standing on. Another is the Fire Flower; when picked up, this item changes the color of Super Mario's outfit and allows him to throw fireballs, or only upgrades Mario to Super Mario if he has not already. A less common item is the Starman, which often appears when Mario hits certain concealed or otherwise invisible blocks. This item makes Mario temporarily invincible to most hazards and capable of defeating enemies on contact.[7]:10

The game consists of eight worlds with four sub-levels called "stages" in each world.[7]:7 The final stage of each world takes place in a castle where Bowser or one of his decoys are fought. The game also includes some stages taking place underwater, which contain different enemies. In addition, there are bonuses and secret areas in the game. Most secret areas contain more coins for Mario to collect, but some contain "warp pipes" that allow Mario to advance to later worlds in the game, skipping over earlier ones.

The game's development was motivated by a desire to give Famicom (i.e., Nintendo Entertainment Systemgame cartridges) a swan song in light of the forthcoming Famicom Disk System, and to further progress Nintendo's work on "athletic games". Originally, the game was based around a shooting mechanic with very different controls.[12] A desire to focus on jumping and the mapping of the mechanic to the A button resulted in it being dropped. Unlike in Mario Bros., where Mario would be hurt by stomping on turtles without first flipping them on their backs, Mario could defeat turtles by stomping on their shells, as the developers decided the previous method had been illogical. The ability to have Mario change size was a result of basing level design around a smaller Mario, then intending to make his size bigger in the final version. They later decided it would be fun to have Mario become bigger as a power-up. The early level design was focused on teaching players that mushrooms were distinct from Goombas and would be beneficial to them: In the first level of the game, the first mushroom is difficult to avoid if it is released.[13]

Using mushrooms to change size was influenced by folktales in which people wander into forests and eat magical Mushrooms; this also resulted in the game world being named the "Mushroom Kingdom".[14]

Development was aimed at keeping things simple, in order to have a new game available for the end-of-year shopping season.[15] Originally an idea for a run and gun stage in which Mario would jump onto a cloud and fire at enemies was to be included; however, this was dropped to maintain the game's focus on jumping action, but the sky-based bonus stages still remained.[16]

In an interview with Eurogamer, Miyamoto explained that he created "World 1-1" to contain everything a player needs to "gradually and naturally understand what they’re doing," so that they can quickly understand how the game works. According to Miyamoto, once the player understands the mechanics of the game, the player will be able to play more freely and it becomes "their game."[18][19]

Minus World

The "Minus World" (also referred to as "World Negative One") is the name given to an unbeatable glitch level in Super Mario Bros. World 1-2 contains a hidden warp zone, with warp pipes that transport the player to worlds 2, 3, and 4, accessed by running over a wall near the exit. If the player is able to exploit a bug that allows Mario to pass through bricks, the player can enter the warp zone by passing through the wall and the pipe to World 4-1 may instead transport the player to a stage labeled "World -1".[20] This stage's map is identical to worlds 2-2 and 7-2 and upon entering the warp pipe at the end, the player is taken back to the start of the level, thus trapping the player in the level until losing all extra lives.[21] Although the level name is shown as " -1" (note the leading space) on the heads-up display, it is actually World 36-1. The game displays tile No. 36, which is a blank space, to the left of the hyphen.[22]

The glitch occurs because passing through the wall allows the player to reach the warp pipes before the screen has scrolled far enough to activate the invisible object that initializes the warp.[23] The game defaults to the World 4-2 warp data since this is the first warp defined in the program. Most warps have three pipes with the destination world number displayed above them; since the World 4-2 warp has only one pipe, the other two exits are set to World 36, so that a blank tile is displayed in the empty spots. Since the World 1-2 warp has three pipes, the player is able to take the other two to World 36-1 (World " -1").

The Minus World bug in the Japanese Famicom Disk System version of the game behaves differently and creates multiple, completable stages. "World -1" is an underwater version of World 1-3 with an alternate color palette, and contains sprites of Princess Toadstool, Bowser, and Hammer Bros. "World -2" is an identical copy of World 7-3, and "World -3" is a copy of World 4-4, also with an alternate color palette, and contains flying Bloopers, no Bowser, and water instead of lava. After completing these levels, the player returns to the title screen as if the game were completed.[24]

The Minus World bug was fixed in Super Mario All-Stars and subsequent remakes;[20] however, the Virtual Console releases for Wii, 3DS and Wii U allow players to perform the glitch, as they are emulations of the original Super Mario Bros. Additionally, the Wii U game NES Remix was also based upon authentic emulation and thus yields the same initially exploitable wall-traversal bug, but the game's strictly compartmentalized gameplay format yields a loss of a life if the player finally attempts to access the entrance pipe to the Minus World.

Music

Nintendo sound designer Koji Kondo wrote the six-song musical score for Super Mario Bros., as well as designing all of the game's sound effects.[25][26] At the time he was composing, video game music was mostly meant to attract attention, not necessarily to enhance or conform to the game. Kondo's work on Super Mario Bros. was one of the major forces in the shift towards music becoming an integral and participatory part of video games.[27] Whenever he has been asked, Kondo lists the Overworld themes from Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda as his favorite.[28]

Kondo had two specific goals for his music: "to convey an unambiguous sonic image of the game world", and "to enhance the emotional and physical experience of the gamer".[27] The music of Super Mario Bros. is coordinated with the onscreen animations of the various sprites, which was one way he created a sense of greater immersion. He wasn't the first to do this, for example, Space Invaders has a simple song that gets faster and faster as the aliens speed up, eliciting a sense of stress and impending doom that matches the increasing challenge of the game.[29] However, he took the idea further than that, saying that, “the guiding question which decides whether to accept or reject his own (and, more recently, others’) musical tracks is: do the game and music fit one another?” [30]

This shift in ideals and results was, in part, born of a method of design that was unusual at the time: instead of being hired later in the process to add music to a nearly finished game, Kondo was there almost from the beginning, working in tandem with the rest of the team. As he said, "the [Super Mario Bros.] music is inspired by the game controls, and its purpose is to heighten the feeling of how the game controls".[31] Before composition began, a prototype was presented to Kondo for the game so that he could get an idea of Mario's general environment. Kondo wrote the score with the help of small pianos for an appropriate melody of this scene. After the development of the game showed progress, he realized that his music did not quite fit the pace of the game, so he changed it a bit by increasing the tempo.[32] The music was further adjusted based on the expectations of Nintendo's play-testers. [33]

Alternate versions

As one of Nintendo's most popular games, Super Mario Bros. has been re-released and remade numerous times, ranging from an arcade version released soon after the original NES release, to the game being available for download on the Virtual Console for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U.

Ports

Super Mario Bros. was ported several times in the years following its original release on the Famicom/NES. A side-scrolling platform game entitled Super Mario Bros. was released for the Game & Watch range of handheld LCD game systems by Nintendo.[34] The Game & Watch Super Mario Bros. is an entirely new game, featuring none of the stages from the Famicom/NES original. In Japan, Super Mario Bros. was released for the Disk System, Nintendo's proprietary floppy disk drive for the Famicom.[35] This version also had multiple Minus World levels[24] and featured on its packaging an artwork drawn by Miyamoto himself.[36] It was also released for the North American NES with other games on the same cartridge (Super Mario Bros.-Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros.-Duck Hunt-World Class Track Meet).

Vs. Super Mario Bros.

One alternate version, Vs. Super Mario Bros.,[37] is nearly a separate game in its own right. This game, one of several made for Nintendo's NES-based arcade cabinet, the Nintendo Vs. Unisystem (and its variant, Nintendo Vs. Dualsystem), is based on Super Mario Bros. and has an identical format. The stages are different; the early stages are subtly different, with small differences like the omission of 1-up mushrooms and other hidden items, narrower platforms and more dangerous enemies, but later stages are changed entirely. These changes have a net effect of making Vs. Super Mario Bros. more difficult than the original Super Mario Bros.[38] Many of these later, changed stages reappeared in the 1986 game, Super Mario Bros. 2.

As with many older arcade games, it is unclear exactly when this game was released; while the arcade boards themselves are stamped "1985",[39] the Killer List of Video Games, the title screen, and the MAME game listing list the game as having been released in 1986.[40]

All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros.

All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros.(オールナイトニッポンスーパーマリオブラザーズ,Ōru Naito Nippon Sūpā Mario Burazāzu?) is a very rare version of Super Mario Bros. with graphics based upon the popular Japanese radio show All Night Nippon. The game, which was only released in Japan for the Famicom Disk System, was a special promotional version that was given away by the show in December 1986. The creators altered the sprites of the enemies, mushroom retainers, and other characters to look like famous Japanese music idols, recording artists, and DJs as well as other people related to All-Night Nippon. They also used the same slightly upgraded graphics and physics that Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels used. It was published by Fuji TV, the same company that later published the game Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic (which was later modified into the Super Mario Bros. 2 that was released outside Japan).[41]

Super Mario Bros. Special

Super Mario Bros. Special(スーパーマリオブラザーズスペシャル,Sūpā Mario Burazāzu Supesharu?) was a game released only in Japan by Hudson Soft for the NEC PC-8801[42] and Sharp X1 computers in Q2 1986. Although it has similar controls and graphics, there are new level layouts and the game scrolls in a different manner than the original game (differing based on the computer). In addition, many new enemies are included, including enemies from Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong.

On the NEC version, the game goes at a greater speed, meaning that the timer drains more swiftly, and the screen does not scroll. The Sharp X1 version has a speed that is much closer to the original game. Neither version features Luigi or a two-player mode.

Super Mario All-Stars

In 1993,[43] Nintendo released an enhanced Super NES compilation titled Super Mario All-Stars. It includes all of the Super Mario Bros. games released for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Famicom. The version of Super Mario Bros. included in the compilation has improved graphics and sound to match the SNES's 16-bit capabilities, as well as minor alterations in some collision mechanics. Another new feature introduced in this game is the ability for the player to switch to Luigi after the end of the stage, unlike in the original Super Mario Bros. where the second player could only play after Mario died. The new version also included a save game feature. Several glitches from the original NES release were also fixed.[44] This version has also been released for the Wii under a re-packaged, special 25th anniversary compilation known as Super Mario All-Stars: 25th-Anniversary Edition.

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe cartridge for the Game Boy Color.

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe(スーパーマリオブラザーズデラックス,Sūpā Mario Burazāzu Derakkusu?), sometimes referred to as Super Mario Bros. DX was released on the Game Boy Color in 1999 in North America and Europe[45] and in 2000 in Japan. Based on the original Super Mario Bros., it featured an overworld level map, simultaneous multiplayer, a Challenge mode (in which the player had to find hidden objects and achieve a certain score in addition to normally completing the level) and eight additional worlds based on the main worlds of the 1986 Super Mario Bros. 2 (which was released on Super Mario All-Stars as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels) as an unlockable extra, under the name "For Super Players". It also was compatible with the Game Boy Printer. The game did not feature any upgraded visuals (aside from some graphics such as water and lava now being animated rather than static), and, since the screen resolution of the Game Boy Color was smaller than the NES, the view distance of the player is reduced. To compensate, players can press up and down to see above and below the player. Pressing select during the game also places the player in the middle or off to the left of the screen so that player can see well. Players can also go back for a very short distance instead of always going to the right. Players can alternate between Mario and Luigi by pressing select on the map screen,[46] and Luigi's outfit was changed from the original white overalls and green shirt to green overalls and brown shirt to better match Mario and the more common color palette. Fire Luigi, originally identical to Fire Mario, took on normal Luigi’s original colors to fit with his Fire colors in later games.

The game holds an aggregate score of 92.11 percent on GameRankings, coming in as the second best game on the Game Boy Color and the 150th best game overall on its lists.[47]IGN's Craig Harris gave it a perfect score, praising it as a perfect translation of the NES game. He hoped that it would be the example for other NES games to follow when being ported to the Game Boy Color.[48]GameSpot gave the game a 9.9, hailing it as the "killer app" for the Game Boy Color and praising the controls and the visuals (it was also the highest rated game in the series, later surpassed by Super Mario Galaxy 2 which holds a perfect 10).[49] Both gave it their Editors' Choice Award.[50][51]Allgame's Colin Williamson praised the porting of the game as well as the extras, noting the only flaw of the game being that sometimes the camera goes with Mario as he jumps up.[52] Nintendo World Report's Jon Lindemann, in 2009, called it their "(Likely) 1999 NWR Handheld Game of the Year," calling the quality of its porting and offerings undeniable.[53] Nintendo Life gave it a perfect score, noting that it retains the qualities of the original game and the extras.[54]St. Petersburg Times′ Robb Guido commented that in this form, Super Mario Bros. "never looked better."[55] The Lakeland Ledger′s Nick S. agreed, praising the visuals and the controls.[56] In 2004, a Game Boy Advance port of Super Mario Bros. (part of the Classic NES Series) was released, which had none of the extras or unlockables available in Super Mario Bros. Deluxe. Of that version, IGN noted that the version did not "offer nearly as much as what was already given on the Game Boy Color" and gave it an 8.0 out of 10.[57]Super Mario Bros. Deluxe ranked third in the best-selling handheld game charts in the U.S. between June 6 and 12, 1999[58] and sold over 2.8 million copies in the U.S.[59] It was included on Singapore Airlines flights in 2006.[60] Lindermann noted Deluxe as a notable handheld release in 1999.[61]

It was released on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console in 2014. In Japan, users who registered a Nintendo Network ID on their Nintendo 3DS system between December 10, 2013 and January 10, 2014 received a free download code, with emails with download codes being sent out starting January 27, 2014.[62] In Europe and Australia, users who registered a Nintendo Network ID on their Nintendo 3DS system between December 10, 2013 and January 31, 2014 received a free download code, with emails with download codes being sent out from February 13 to 28, 2014.[63][64] It was released for purchase on the Nintendo 3DS eShop in Europe on February 27, 2014,[65] in Australia on February 28, 2014,[66] and in North America on December 25, 2014.[67]

Super Luigi Bros.

Super Luigi Bros. is a remake of Super Mario Bros. included in NES Remix 2, featuring Luigi and mirrored to scroll from right to left. The only playable character in the game is Luigi, with the same performance attributes he has in the Japan release of Super Mario Bros. 2. If the two player mode is played then both players play as Luigi. The game is based on a mission in NES Remix, featuring Luigi in a mirrored version of World 1-2.[68][69]

Reception

Super Mario Bros. received favorable reviews, and further popularized the side-scrolling subgenre of the already popular platform video game.[72] This led to many sequels in the series that built upon the same basic premise. Altogether, excluding Game Boy Advance and Virtual Console sales, the game has sold 40.24 million copies, making it the best-selling video game in the Mario series.[73]

Allgame gave Super Mario Bros. a five-star rating, stating that "The sense of excitement, wonder and most of all -- enjoyment felt upon first playing this masterpiece of videogame can't barely be put into words. And while its sequels have far surpassed it in terms of length, graphics, sound and other aspects, Super Mario Bros., like any classic -- whether of a cinematic or musical nature -- has withstood the test of time, continuing to be fun and playable." and that "Anyone who considers them self a gamer needs to play this game at least once, if not simply for a history lesson."[70]

Almost all of the game's aspects have been praised at one time or another, from its large cast of characters to a diverse set of levels. One of the most-praised aspects of the game is the precise controls. The player is able to control how high and far Mario or Luigi jumps, and how fast he can run.[74]Nintendo Power listed it as the fourth best Nintendo Entertainment System video game, describing it as the game that started the modern era of video games as well as "Shigeru Miyamoto's masterpiece".[75] The game ranked first on Electronic Gaming Monthly′s "Greatest 200 Games of Their Time" list[76] and was named in IGN's top 100 games of all-time list twice (in 2005 and 2007).[77]ScrewAttack declared it the second-best Mario game of all time.[78] In 2009, Game Informer put Super Mario Bros. in second place on their list of "The Top 200 Games of All Time," behind The Legend of Zelda, saying that it "remains a monument to brilliant design and fun gameplay".[79] The Game Informer staff also ranked it the second best in their 2001 list of the top 100 games ever made.[80] In 2012, G4 ranked Super Mario Bros. first of the "Top 100 Video Games of All Time," citing its revolutionary gameplay as well as its role in helping recover the NA gaming industry from the Video Game Crash of 1983.[81] In 2014, IGN ranked Super Mario Bros. as the best Nintendo game in their "Top 125 Nintendo Games of All Time" list, saying that "this is the most important Nintendo game ever made."[82]:9

Legacy

Super Mario Bros.'s success led to the development of many successors in the Super Mario series of video games, which in turn form the core of the greater Mario franchise. The gameplay concepts and elements established in Super Mario Bros. are prevalent in nearly every Super Mario game. The series consists of over 15 entries; at least one Super Mario game has been released on nearly every Nintendo console to date. The most recent release is Super Mario Maker, released in 2015 for the Wii U. The series is one of the best-selling, with over 310 million copies of games sold worldwide as of September 2015.[83]

In 2015, game designer Josh Millard released Ennuigi. Ennuigi adds metafictional commentary to the original game since it relates the story of Luigi's inability to come to terms with the lack of narrative.[86][87][88] In a Reddit thread, Millard commented "I [...] think it's a pretty weird implied narrative once you step back and look at it, and enjoyed funneling some thoughts about all that into a recharacterization of Luigi as a guy who's as legitimately confused and distressed by his strange life as you'd expect a person to be once removed from the bubble of cartoony context of the franchise."[89]

Re-releases

In early 2003, Nintendo re-released the game on the Game Boy Advance in Japan as part of their Famicom Minis collection and in the U.S. as part of the NES Series. Unlike previous re-releases, these versions contain no graphical updates and all of the original glitches remain. Super Mario Bros. was one of the best-selling of these re-releases; according to the NPD Group (which tracks game sales in North America), this re-released version of Super Mario Bros. was the best-selling Game Boy Advance game in June 2004 to December 2004.[90] In 2005, Nintendo released this game again for the GBA as part of its 20th Anniversary with a special edition, which sold approximately 876,000 units.[91]

Super Mario Bros. is also one of the 19 NES games included in the GameCube game Animal Crossing. The only known way to unlock Super Mario Bros. in most versions is by use of a game modification device such as a Game Shark or Action Replay), though it was distributed as a Famitsu prize to owners of Doubutsu no Mori+. The game is fully emulated, with no changes made from the original version.

Super Mario Bros. was released on December 2, 2006 in Japan, December 25, 2006 in North America and January 5, 2007 in PAL regions for Wii's Virtual Console. As it is an emulation of the original game, nothing is changed from the original NES release.[74][92]Super Mario Bros. is also one of the trial games available in the "Masterpieces" section in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.[93]Super Mario Bros. was released on the Nintendo 3DS in September 2011 for members of Nintendo's 3DS Ambassador Program, and a general release came through in Japan on January 5, 2012, in North America on February 16, 2012 and in Europe on March 1, 2012.

^"Minus World". Transmissionzero. Archived from the original on April 29, 2011. Retrieved August 28, 2014. The “Minus World” isn’t a secret bonus level, and in fact isn’t really numbered ‘−1’ at all. The level is actually numbered ‘36–1’, but the number 36 happens to be represented by a blank tile in the game. This gives the impression that the screen reads “World −1”.